don’t think I can write about that because I only seen it in the
movies. There’s marriage stories but it’s so boring, a couple in
the suburbs and the man on the train becoming unfaithful and
how bored she is because she’s too intelligent or something
about how angry she is but I can’t remember why. A love
story’s so stupid in these modern times. I can’t have it be about
m y life because number one I don’t remember very much and
number two it’s against the rules, you’re supposed to make
things up. The best thing that ever happened to me is these
walls and I don’t think you could turn that into a story per se or
even a novel o f ideas that people would grasp as philosophical:
for instance, that you can just sit and they provide a
fram ework o f dignity because no one’s watching and I have
had too many see too much, they see you when they do things
to you that you don’t want, they look, and the problem is
there’s no walls keeping you sacred; nor that if you stand up
they are solid which makes you seem real too, a real figure in a
room with real walls, a touchstone o f authenticity, a standard
for real existence, you are real or you feel real, you don’t have
to touch them to feel real, you just have to be able to touch
them. M y pacifist friend gave me money to live here. She saw
me on the street one day, I guess, after I didn’t go back to her
apartment no more. She said come with me and she got a
newspaper and she found an apartment and she called the
landlord and she put the money in m y hand and she sent me to
the landlord which scared me because I never met one before, a
real one, but also she wasn’t going to let the cash go elsewhere
which there was a fair chance it would, because I would have
liked some coke or something or some dinner or some drinks
and a m ovie and a book or something more real than being
inside which seemed impossible— it seemed not really available and it seemed impossible to sustain so it made more sense
to me to use the cash for something real that I knew I could get,
something I knew how to use. I started sending her money
back as soon as I got some, I’d put some in an envelope and
mail it back even if it was just five dollars but she said I was
stupid because she only said it was a loan but it w asn’t and I
didn’t need to pay it back and everyone knew that which is my
weakness, how everyone got to know things but I don’t know
them. I can’t think o f any stories about pacifists that aren’t
true. There’s nothing imaginary about walls, or eating,
nothing fictive as it were, but more especially there’s nothing
imaginary about them when they’re missing. M y walls are
thin; yeah I wish they were mine. N othing’s yours. God hurts
you if you think they’re yours. In one second o f a bad thought
you can bring evil down on you. The walls are thin. I dream
